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Obajana Cement Plant to be world’s biggest by 2015

Jun, 21 2012

(Africa)  --  With the addition of a 5.25 million metric tonnes production line (Line 3) to its  five million metric tonnes capacity, Obajana Cement Company is set to be the largest plant globally by 2015.

The new line was  purposely built to lift the plant’s capacity to 10.5MMTs per annum to boost cement production and bring down the commodity’s price.

President, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, at the plant’s inauguration , unveiled plans to transform it  to the world’s largest cement factory by 2015.

He said: “With the completion of our 5.25 million metric tonnes per annum, Obajana will become the single largest cement plant in the world with a combined capacity of 10.25 MMTPA. We have achieved all these in less than 10 years.”

He said the 3.0 MMTPALine 4 Plant, would further take the capacity of the factory to 13.25 MMTPA, when completed by 2015.

“This will indeed make us the power house of cement in Africa,” he said.

 President Goodluck Jonathan said the government would  soon launch backward integration in the textile and garment, sugar and automobile sectors, just as it did in the cement sector.

His words: “We are reviewing our existing industrial policies with a view to placing the highest priority on local production at the expense of imports. This will help us to create more jobs for our teeming youths as well as help raise the standard of living of our people.

“Let me reiterate that this administration remains committed to providing an enabling environment for businesses to thrive. The key objective of the  fiscal policy in the area of tariffs and trade remains to promote industrialisation and the growth of the manufacturing and agricultural sectors of the economy, and above all, to create employment for Nigerians.”

“This achievement makes the company and indeed Alhaji Aliko Dangote a worthy ambassador of Nigeria. Companies like Dangote deserve special recognition and commendation for their enormous contributions towards the realisation of our goal of achieving industrialisation, sustainable wealth creation and job creation.

“For the outstanding contributions made towards the development of the economy, Dangote was last year, found deserving and worthy of one of our highest national honours of GCON to reward him for his enterprise and patriotism and to serve as an incentive to encourage other privileged high networth entrepreneurs to invest in growing this country”.

Jonathan said Dangote Cement should be praised or taking advantage of the cement backward integration policy with its heavy investment of up to $4.2billion in the last nine years that has seen it become the largest cement producing company not only in Nigeria but in Africa.

He said the Dangote Group, which has 13 subsidiaries that cuts across food, real estate, cement, and oil and gas, among others, is playing a leading role in our drive to revive the industrial sector.

“The contributions of Dangote Cement to the phenomenal expansion of local cement production that has seen local production increased from 2MMT in 2002 to 17.3MMT in 2011 deserves special commendation.

“Cement is the world’s universally accepted main building material and, therefore, a vital necessity for physical infrastructure development. Because of Nigeria’s natural endowment in all the inputs needed for cement production, the Federal Government  in 2002 set self-sufficiency in cement production as a target, and promulgated the backward integration policy for the cement industry for the realisation of this goal.

“Our backward integration policy of 2002  stands as one of our few success stories out of all government’s various industrialisation policies post-independence, because with the coming on stream of 13.0 mt additional new capacity from the new plants from Lafarge and Dangote Cement, the target of the policy to move this country to self-sufficiency in cement production, has been achieved and Nigeria is now poised to become a net exporter of cement. The government intends to identify other areas in the economy where this type of success story can be replicated,” he said.

The President said the goal of the government is not only to be self-sufficient in cement production but also to become a net exporter of cement and indeed, a cement-producing nation, like we are an oil-producing nation.

“An economy that relies solely on imports cannot grow and cannot give the economic independence that every sovereign nation desires,” he said.

Source:

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